


Tears of the Lonely

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Jessica needs to remove him from her life not matter how hard it is.
Relationships: Jessica Whitly & Martin Whitly
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020





	Tears of the Lonely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cozy_coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cozy_coffee/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
> 
> Notes: written for cozy_coffee in comment_fic for the prompt Any, any, tears of the lonely. Also written for the picture prompt at get your words out’s Yahtzee challenge and for the allbingo prompt of Irish coffee.

The silence enveloping her family home smothered her. Jessica couldn’t remember the last time it had ever felt this empty and quiet. Of course, it wasn’t truly empty. Her children slept upstairs. Well, Ainsley was asleep. Malcolm was probably triple checking his suitcase, over the moon that she had said yes to him spending the week with the Arroyos. Now that the monster who had loved her – if he did love her – had been sentenced Gil Arroyo could talk to Malcolm again. The DA hadn’t allowed it prior, which had been so hard for an eleven-year-old boy to understand. After several supervised visits, she felt comfortable with the Arroyos babysitting Malcolm. Besides, Gil had been so kind to her the few times she had called and talked to him over the long months that had passed going through the trial. 

Jessica sipped her coffee – appropriately whiskeyed up – as she contemplated her next step. She had her itinerary on the table. She was taking Ainsley to the beach for a week while Malcolm got his wish to spend time with the Arroyos where he felt safe from the things his father had done. Jessica needed to get away, to forget that almost everyone she had ever cared about had abandoned her. How ironic was it that the only person checking up on her wasn’t the men and women she’d known for years but rather the cop her husband nearly murdered, the man who’d listened to her son that his father was a monster. But Gil Arroyo’s calls weren’t enough to stave off the desperate loneliness weighing on her. None of her former friends wanted to be around her and the pack of journalistic jackals that followed her around. The reporters had alternately tried to make her Martin’s accomplice or his victim. Jessica hated it. She was neither, not really. Maybe she should have known. How had she not? Because he was so adept at hiding what he was.

She sighed and took a deeper drink of her Irish coffee. A scene from one of her favorite books flitted past her whirling mind, one that fit so perfectly. _The Great Gatsby_ had maybe a few too many parallels to her privileged life but Nick’s thought of _the loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly,_ fit her far too well right now.

Jessica was tired of staring. She swiped the bundle of love letters off the kitchen table and tossed them into the sink. She gazed at them for a while. Hints of his cologne clung to the aging stationary. Some of it had been so pretty. Martin’s handwriting had been florid and precise, really quite lovely to look at, far too nice to be a doctor’s. A hint of a smile touched her lips at the memory of joking with Martin about it. That momentary burst of joy spiraled her deeper into the pain. Tears pricked her eyes and Jessica blinked them back. 

He'd devastated her. He’d thrown a grenade into his family’s life and laughed as he did it. Jessica would never be free of that laughing, self-satisfied expression on his face as he scarred his son for life just before the cops hauled him away. _We’re the same._ “The hell you are,” she muttered, striking a match and letting it fall onto years of love. The paper didn’t catch as easy as she thought it would. Jessica lit another and held it to the stash of stationary. “I will never let Malcolm be like you.”

She watched the flames consume the declarations of his love for her. Why did it hurt? It was supposed to free her, make her feel better. Instead all she could think about was how horribly lonely she was because he’d stripped everything away from her just by being what he was. Hiding behind the loneliness was all the pain. All she could picture was his body against hers, inside hers. Parts of him had grown inside her and as horrifying as that was on one hand, she wouldn’t change one thing about her children. She loved them in spite of that man.

Jessica turned on the faucet, drowning the fire. Her tears dripped down to join the flood. She leaned on the cool swoop of the fixture watching the fire die, the smoke getting into her lungs like he had gotten into her soul. She missed him and hated herself for it. She had _loved_ him so much and Jessica didn’t know how to turn that off completely. _Simple,_ she thought bitterly. _Remember all the horrible things he’d done, all twenty-three of them. Remember your son’s fear, his nightmares, his insistence on some girl in a box in your basement. You’d take that bad dream, that figment of his imagination away from him if you could._

Steeling herself, she left the wet ashes and remains of the letters in the sink, polished off her coffee, and walked up the stairs. She peeked in on Ainsley who slept soundly. She found Malcolm under the covers with a flashlight and took it away from him. He’d pouted and fussed but she got him to sleep. Finally, she collapsed in her bed, new within days of Martin being taken away. She couldn’t sleep in their bed, nor even in their room. Jessica curled up alone, wondering if she would always be that way. It might be what she deserved for not figuring things out. It might just be her feeling sorry for herself. It didn’t matter. All she knew was the nights were the worst of it, in the silence, alone, waiting for her son’s screams, waiting for the tears to overwhelm her. Jessica had learned to hate the night.


End file.
